A number of schools are pioneering artificial intelligence guidelines with the understanding that this technology is here to stay. Others are waiting patiently to see the policies other leaders are implementing. However, the overall consensus is that educators need more information on how to bring AI into their classrooms.
So what should your AI guidelines look like? New Jersey recently released resources to help schools harness AI for teaching and learning. Let’s take a look:
Learning resources
Hosted on the state Department of Education’s Office of Innovation website, the guidelines offer several resources ranging from webinars surrounding the “considerations for artificial intelligence in education” to free documents from national organizations like Common Sense Education, which has published a wealth of use cases for AI in the classroom.
The New Jersey Department of Education also participates in the Teach AI initiative, a consortium of state education departments and international education agencies that work together to create frameworks for AI policy and teaching resources.
“AI is a transformative technology that will open new opportunities for teaching and learning,” Acting Commissioner of Education Kevin Dehmer said in a statement. “Our goal is to ensure students have the knowledge and skills in working with AI to help prepare them for success in the classroom and beyond graduation.”
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The state’s guidelines also include several resources to help educators learn how to teach about AI and some free AI tools they can experiment with. Here are some examples:
Teaching about AI
- The TeachAI website offers best practice guidelines for policymakers, education leaders, teachers and parents.
- The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) published The Hands-On AI Projects for the Classroom guides for elementary, secondary, elective and computer science teachers.
- Explore a wide range of learning units for K12 AI literacy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s RAISE initiative.
Free AI tools
- Google’s Quick Draw Application and Quick Draw Dataset Explorer (recognizes drawings using AI).
- Stable Diffusion (a text-to-image generator).
- ChatGPT 3.5 (OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot that responds to user-generated prompts).
Moving forward, New Jersey’s Office of Innovation will gather feedback from educators to learn how AI is being used in the classroom, which will help inform policy implementation in the future, according to a press release from the NJ Department of Education. Click here to take a deeper look at the state’s AI guidance.
DA’s AI coverage
We’ve also published numerous articles that dive into research about AI and how your peers are using the technology to meet their community’s needs. You can find some of those articles below:
